Meme: The Nearest Book

I saw this on Chicken Spaghetti and thought I'd join in:

1 - Grab the nearest book.
2 - Open to page 123.
3 - Find the fifth sentence.
4 - Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
Don't you dare dig around for that "cool" or "intellectual" book on your shelves. (I know you were thinking about it.) Just pick up whatever is closest.

So here's what I found:

Were they pictures of spaceships though ? I supposed they must be: the creatures he'd drawn next to them certainly weren't human. One or two waved something rather like tentacles, but others petered out in long weedy filaments, or bubbled and frothed like cuckoo spit. Obviously they were aliens. But the cone-topped spacecraft looming at the back of every drawing - something about them was not convincing.

This is from Charles Butler's excellent The Lurkers which, coincidentally, is out today and comes highly recommended. It's also up for a CYBIL !